Google to build new undersea cable in Asia and Australia
If you live in Japan, Guam, or Australia, your internet may be about to get faster.
Google has announced that it has invested in a new undersea cable: the Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA) Cable System.
The cable will connect Tokyo and Osaka to Guam, and Guam to Sydney. It will stretch nearly 6000 miles in total, and is set to be completed in 2019.
Google is invested in JGA's southern segment, which connects Guam to Sydney, in addition to Australian ISP AARNet, and undersea cable manufacturer RTI-C.
The cable will provide better connectivity to the five regions where Google Cloud Platform services are available in Asia and Australia: Mumbai, Singapore, Taiwan, Tokyo, and Sydney.
This cable joins three other cables to make up Google's "network family," including Indigo, which connects Perth, Sydney, and Singapore to Jakarta, HK-G which connects Hong Kong to Guam, and SJC connecting Japan to China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, and Singapore. Google also plans on constructing two cables to spread its Cloud platform throughout the U.S. and South America in 2019.
What does all this mean for you? If you live in Australia or Southeast Asia, Google's subsea cable network will expand the capacity and range of its Google Cloud Platform in your area.
Companies that use Google Cloud Platform, including Coca Cola, Best Buy, Niantic, Spotify, Motorola, Paypal, Apple's iCloud, and Airbus, will have access to greater server capacity, higher performance, and fewer service disruptions.
Topics Google
Monica wrote for Mashable's Tech section with a focus on retail, internet of things, and the intersections of technology and social justice. She holds a degree in creative writing from Brown University, and has previously written for Dow Jones Media, the New York Post, Yahoo Finance, and others. In her free time, she can be found attempting to cook Asian food, buying board games, and looking for new hobbies.
